


You Are Coming Down With Me

by Duck_Life



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Coda, Gen, Guilt, Post-Episode: s14e14 Ouroboros, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Rowena tries to cope with the guilt she feels after saying yes to Michael.
Relationships: Rowena MacLeod & Sam Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	You Are Coming Down With Me

Sam takes her away, not all the way home but to a nice suite about 40 minutes’ drive from the bunker. He leads her up to the room, carries her bag, pretends he doesn’t notice the way her hands are shaking. 

“Call me if you need anything,” Sam tells her, setting her duffel down on the bed. “I mean it. Please. Anything at all.” 

Rowena’s watery eyes drift from the hotel minibar to Sam’s creased face. “You should just kill me right now.” 

It says something about their lives that Sam doesn’t even look the tiniest bit surprised by her statement. “Maybe,” he says. “But I’m not going to.” 

“Samuel, I’m sorry,” she says, voice cracking like a bent twig, like a dry bone. “Michael, he— he meant what he said. I knew he wasn’t to be trusted,  _ obviously _ I knew that, but I… he was going to kill you, all of you. And there was something I could do about it, he said, and so I… I was a fool. And now they’re… all those people—”

“I know,” Sam says, sharp and sad and scared all at once. (They have so many pyres to build, back home.) “That was Michael, Rowena. It wasn’t you.” 

“But I said yes. I let him in,” she says, sniffing. “And…” And here’s the part that truly damns her. “And I think I was right to, in the end. Because he killed all those people but he didn’t get to you. He didn’t get to your boys.” She shudders, pinching the bridge of her nose. “He was taunting me, you know. Michael.” She says his name like a curse. “Wanted to force me to admit that I cared about you, that I cared about Dean and Castiel and Jack. But I already knew that. I already admitted that a long time ago… to myself, anyway. Samuel, I said yes because I thought it would protect you. And the four of you are still alive.”

Sam passes a hand over his mouth. He’s still hearing the screams of the Hunters who put their trust in him, echoing like a ringing in his ears. Still seeing the life burn out of Maggie, an afterimage burned into the insides of his eyelids. 

“Your soldiers are dead because of me,” Rowena says. “And I don’t care. And that’s why you should go ahead and kill me.”

“Rowena—”

“You’re going to do it anyway!” she shouts, her calm cracking. “Well, I did it. I failed the test. I  _ am _ one of your wicked little monsters anyway, so you should just kill me.” 

“No,” Sam says. “No. Okay? No.”

“For God’s sake,  _ why _ ?” 

“I just lost a lot of people,” Sam says. “I’m not here to lose another one.”

“I’m not a person, Samuel,” she says, hair askew and eyes wild, frantic and frustrated tears trailing down her cheeks. “I’m hundreds of years old. I’ve done terrible things. I shouldn’t even be alive. I shouldn’t have been in that bunker at all.”

“You know why you were there?” Sam says, anger spilling out because he’s sick and fucking tired of trying to explain to the people he loves why they deserve to be alive. “You were there because we were coming back from a hunt. Because you were helping us kill that Gorgon. Because you were working alongside us to do good.”

“It doesn’t balance out.”

“It never does,” Sam says. “We don’t do what we do for balance. We do it for that sad sack we had to pull out of the Gorgon’s clutches. The guy that we saved with  _ your _ antidote. He gets to go home and take a shower and make himself a shitty microwaved meal because of  _ you _ .”

Rowena shakes her head, curls bouncing. “Doesn’t make a difference.”

“Makes a difference to him,” Sam says. “Makes a difference to me.” But the words sound empty. He has so many pyres to build. “Listen, I don’t…” He sighs, sinking down on the edge of the hotel bed. After a moment, she joins him, not kicking her feet up beside her like she normally might. Just sitting. Just drinking in the silence and the grief. “The Hunters… their deaths are on Michael. And they’re on me. And they’re on you. You have to learn how to carry it.”

“I’ve done a lot of bad things, Samuel,” she reminds him. “Always carried those just fine.”

“Doing evil because you’re trying to do evil is different from trying to do good and getting it wrong,” Sam says. “It feels different. You have to carry it differently.” 

Her shaky breaths fill the dark room. “I’m not sure if I can.” 

“Then you don’t,” Sam says. “You let it overwhelm you. For a while. And then when enough time has passed, you can try again.” Their hands bump together on the bedspread, and she takes his and squeezes, hard. Sam doesn’t try to hug her or give her a tissue for her tears. He just holds her hand. 

“Sometimes I miss being the villain,” she admits. 

Sam thinks about blood, tacky and thick on his tongue, thinks about his eyes going black as Lilith sinks to the floor. Thinks about how that kid is someone the Apocalypse World Hunters would never have trusted, would never have put their faith in, would never have died for. “Yeah,” Sam says. “Me too.” 


End file.
